It's Not Hate
by makodreamafar
Summary: Snape doesn't hate Harry James Potter, not necessarily. If someone was to be accurate they would need to say that he hated what the boy represented. Harry was the embodiment of the greatest mistake of Severus Snape's life. Severus Snape/Lily Evans


Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

It's not Hate

Snape doesn't hate Harry James Potter, not necessarily. If someone was to be accurate they would need to say that he hated what the boy represented. Harry was the embodiment of the greatest mistake of Severus Snape's life. He was the result of a single word spoken in broken anger and shame; mudblood.

Everyone was wrong, it wasn't James that Snape saw every time he looked at Harry. He saw the boy-he saw him in perfect detail, James's features with Lily's eyes. That was what bothered him, the fact that their features were combined. Oh, it would have been easy to deal with if the boy had held James's eyes as well but the combination of James's and Lily's features made Snape sick to his stomach. It should have been him-it should have been his child that Lily had become pregnant with. It had almost been.

Setting the quill that had been perched between his fingers down, Snape turned his face slightly to the left the picture on the edge of his desk coming into perfect focus. Lily was smiling at him, her red hair bound into a ponytail that was lying over one shoulder and a bright white knit scarf wrapped around her neck. It had been taken their fourth year right after Halloween. The woman's arm waved and she began to dance in her photo, snow swirling around her body as she moved. Lily had been growing into a beautiful woman and her body was stuck somewhere between a childish innocence and a strong womanhood, in the photograph.

Snape knew he would be looked at with pity if anyone saw the photo, a particular headmaster's face flashing in his mind with the thought. It was for this reason that the photo was on his desk in his quarters. A place where people besides himself rarely went. He had other photo's, one's that had been taken during their fifth year and during their childhood, they were hidden in a small box that he had locked in his desk. This photo though was most possibly one of his last untainted memories of Lily's relationship with him. Taken before he had started diving deeper into the Dark Arts and the tension of it on their relationship had reached a high level.

He turned away from the photograph and looked at the essay that he was grading, Potter. He wished he had never set eyes on the boy, the reminder of the one thing that he had wanted more than anything and had lost because he had been moronic. What would Lily say if she saw him now, would she finally forgive him for the things that he had done, would she turn away from him? Would she understand why he treated her son the way he did, would she hate him for it? Maybe if she had been alive he wouldn't treat the boy as he did, maybe the pain wouldn't be so sharp whenever he saw Lily's eyes looking at him in every damned Gryffindor potions class that her son was in.

When Lily was alive there was always some small chance that she would one day reconcile with him. There had been some small hope in his heart that she would one day be with him, an irrational annoying thought that persisted even though the woman had a husband and child. The red ink on the end of his quill had began to splatter across the boy's work and he pushed the quill to the side before standing and making his way to the fire whiskey that was a permanent fixture in his home. It was supposed to be considered something unrefined to drink away your problems but what did he have to lose?

"Damn you," he poured some of the amber liquid into a tumbler before tipping the glass to his mouth. The substance was hot as it went down practically searing his throat and he drank. He wanted to blame James for his bond with Lily breaking he couldn't though. James had not forced the word to exit his mouth even if it had been the bastard to make his ire rise to new heights. No, it had been all his fault. Now he had to live with the reminder of that mistake in his classes. There had been a point when he thought that his and Lily's relationship would be fixed, she had come to him one night in tears. Angry and scared she had told him that she had caught James cheating on her with an Auror from the office. She had fallen into his arms and had cried, he could still remember every moment.

"_How could he Sev, I.." Lily's voice was shaking as she sat on his couch, her robes swirling around her legs as she placed her face in trembling hands. Snape shook his head and took his place next to her gently drawing his arms around her as he stroked his fingers through red hair that had darkened with Lily's age. "I…I didn't know where else to go, I know it's been years-God what am I doing." She shook with a sob and her fingers latched onto his robes. Snape shook his head and drew her a bit closer not sure what to say. It felt amazing to have Lily in his arms, even knowing that he didn't deserve it. The mark on his arm proved that much to him. _

_Tears were soaking into his robes but he didn't mind, he wasn't sure how long Lily cried, he only knew that he wished that she wouldn't leave his arms again. It came as a surprise though when she lifted her face, her eyes puffy and red and pain etched onto every inch of her features, she still looked so beautiful. Leaning slightly he caused their lips to meet and she didn't resist him, leaning into the embrace and falling into him. Her hands were still clutched in his robes as the world fell away and they sank into an embrace of adultery, love and despair._

Snape poured another tumbler full of the alcohol before drinking it down trying to drown the memory. Yes, Harry could have very well of been his, he had even hoped for a time that he was. It was then that he began to toy with the idea of betraying the Dark Lord, his mind being made up when he had realized that Voldemort had planned on killing Lily and the child that he had once dreamed was his. The tumbler fell from his hand to shatter on the floor, the delicate crystal breaking. He knew he could repair it with a simple spell but he didn't. It had been so much easier to ignore the pain before Potter had come to the school, so much simpler to pretend that he could move on.

Unbidden he felt his eyes water and he pushed his hand to his eyes trying to quell them. He wasn't going to cry, the warmth from the memory of holding Lily's body had faded from him to be replaced with the way he had held her after her death. Even after all this time he could remember the scent of burning wood, the dust that had clung to the air from the damage to the house. He could still recall the terror that had filled him, as well as the mantra that he had repeated over and over in his head. 'Please, not Lily.' Three words that he had screamed in his mind as he made his way into the house, only to find that they weren't answered. Lily had been dead, her body cold without the fire that had burned inside of her.

Snape curled his hand around the mantle of the fireplace and he heard the crystal crunch under his boot as he steadied himself. "Damn you," the words were hollow and he felt tears leak out from beneath his fingers. He had dared to hope at one time that this pain would fade, that he would be allowed to sink into a state where he would no longer wish to hold Lily in his arms; where he didn't wish that when he had found out Lily was pregnant that she had told him it was James's. It wasn't Lily he was damning though, nor was it either of the Potters, no he was damning himself because a part of him still wished that Harry had been his, that was why he couldn't stand the sight of the boy and also why he could never hate him.

END

A/N So this is my first posted admittance into the Harry Potter fandom and not my usual work either, I hope you enjoyed this story and I also hope that you shall take the time to review.


End file.
